Dipl.-Ing. Viktória Éva Lélek
Understanding the Architecture of Sprawl
Residential areas on the urban fringe of metropolitan regions. Regulations, planning practices and housing preferences as driving forces of transformation. (Working Title)
Supervision by PhD – Associate professor Hector Mendoza Ramirez | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
Co-supervision by Ass. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. Angelika Psenner | Technische Universität Wien
Nowadays as environmental consciousness and public health awareness gain much higher importance in our everyday lives, we start to re-imagine our living habitats, which for most of us are now, our cities. We start to re-think methods of education, employment, production, transportation and sharing goods. We start to re-design the built environment to make it more green, compact and human-centred. While doing so, we face one of the greatest challenges of urban planning today, which is also one of the most discussed topics in research right now. Urban sprawl is a worldwide phenomenon in metropolitan regions caused by multi-disciplinary factors. Thus, it needs the cooperation of researchers and professionals of different fields to cope with its challenges and solve the problems caused by it. We are facing not only a negative effect on our climate through pollution caused by commuting, but also a long term land shortage. However, it is hard to understand urban sprawl without understanding the dream image of the detached house, so many people desire – but less and less can afford. Housing preferences are varying not only in different phases of modern urban history, but also in different locations throughout a continent. So are building regulations and planning practices, which have a huge influence on growth patterns of residential areas on the urban fringe of metropolitan regions. The aim of this thesis is to investigate important variables that led to different levels of scattering in European suburban areas. Besides different socio-economic and geographical attributes, this thesis focuses on spatial- and architectural planning factors in correlation with local cultures and regulations.
#urban sprawl #suburban #housing #architecture #zoning
Source: Google Earth